1. ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE TACTICS: ASSESSING AND ADVANCING THE EVIDENCE BASE
Tom Packard, DSW and Amber Brychta Shih, MSW
School of Social Work
San Diego State University
Society for Social Work and Research
Annual Conference, January 2013
San Diego 1

2. “People hate change, and with good reason
“People hate change, and with good reason. Change makes us stupider, relatively speaking. Change adds new information to the universe; information that we don’t know. Our knowledge – as a percentage of all the things that can be known – goes down a tick every time something changes.”
- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle, 1996, p. 198.

3. LAYERS/PERSPECTIVES Theory
Assessment (incl. readiness, change capacity)
Change goals and targets
Contextual factors (environment, accountability expectations, etc.)
Characteristics of the change leader(s)
Effects on employees
Strategies
Methods
Tactics
Outcomes

4. THEORIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Life cycle: stages of development
Evolution: adaptation & survival of the fittest
Political, dialectical, conflict
Institutional and neoinstititional: follow the trends
Stakeholder: “keep the customer satisfied”
Rational adaptation/human agency: leaders, managers, staff can create change

5. STATE OF THE KNOWLEDGE BASE
A vast literature:
theory
large-scale studies (Galaskiewicz & Bielefeld, 1998)
individual case studies, e.g., executives as change leaders
academic studies
“guru literature”, “management by bestseller”
So far, mostly too esoteric or too anecdotal

6. STATE OF THE SCIENCE
Research which offers generalizable, evidence-based practice guidelines is less common.
Consistent methodologies and measurements are not used.
Outcomes are typically not well-documented.
The evidence for the assertions and prescriptions in the literature must be considered weak.

7. ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE DEFINED
Planned organizational change involves
leadership and the mobilizing of staff to
explicitly address problems or needs in the organization’s current state, to
move the organization to a desired future state,
using change processes which involve both human and technical aspects of the organization.
Of course, organizational change happens almost constantly. Staff in organizations make changes and adaptations on a regular basis, and organizations are also changed by forces in their environments. Human service organizations change based on environmental dynamics including new laws, policy directives, and budgetary decisions.
We are talking here about planned organizational change, in which a leader in the organization identifies a problem, need, or opportunity for improvement. In this sense, planned organizational change can be defined as “leadership and the mobilizing of staff to explicitly address problems or needs in the organization’s current state to move the organization to a desired future state using change processes which involve both human and technical aspects of the organization.” 7

8. STEPS IN PLANNED ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE (A Phase Model: Work in Progress*)
Assess the present
Create a sense of urgency
Clarify the change imperative
Ensure support and address resistance
Develop an action system
Implement the change
Evaluate, institutionalize, and celebrate
*Lewis, J., Packard, T., & Lewis, M. (2012). Management of Human Service Programs, 5th Ed. Belmont, CA: Thompson/Brooks Cole.
One consultant has described organizational change using the metaphor of a tent. Some people may remember a time in their childhood where they received a pup tent as a present. It is usually first set up in the living room, with little effort and much subsequent fun. However, in the “real world”, a tent may be set up when the campers arrive after dark at a campsite, in the rain, trying to set up a tent on a hill with water running through, ending up on a hard, lumpy surface and missing at least two tent stakes. The process as described here is like setting up a tent in your living room, and actual organizational change is more like dealing with a dark, rainy camp site. The steps should be done, but there will be inevitable complications and challenges which will need to be addressed.
Also, these steps are presented in the order that they should normally occur, but there may be times when the order may change, or, more commonly, steps may need to be partly repeated based on new developments or on broadening the effort to new parts of the organization.
The stages and tactics presented here are evidence-based insofar as they use two sources from the literature which were summaries of existing work on organizational change. One is a book by Proehl, on changing human service organizations, and the other is a public administration journal article which summarized the existing literature. 8

9. RESEARCH METHODS
Content analysis of two related streams of literature on organizational change:
References from Fernandez and Rainey (2006) which addressed change tactics
References from Social Services Abstracts and Google Scholar from 2005 to 2011 using the key words “organizational change”.
Two researchers reviewed titles and then abstracts to eliminate sources which did not include organizational change tactics

10. PUBLICATION TYPE (F&R = Fernandez & Rainey, SW = social work)
Journal article 42 38
Book
Monograph 1

11. SECTORS STUDIED (F&R = Fernandez & Rainey, SW = social work)
Business/for profit 13 2
Government/public 52 11
Not-for-profit 3 10
All or some of the above 16

12. EMPIRICAL BASIS (% mentioned) (F&R = Fernandez & Rainey, SW = social work)
Literature review 28
Multiple case studies 26
Author’s authority as consultant 13
Author’s authority as researcher or teacher 11
Survey of multiple organizations 7 10
Survey of people across organizations 6 3
Single case study 4 21
Meta-analysis 2
Other or multiple
Survey in one organization 1

13. THEORY OR MODEL, STATISTICAL TESTS USED
TYPES OF DATA
F&R SW
Qualitative
62%
58%
Quantitative 9%
16%
Both
11%
26%
THEORY OR MODEL, STATISTICAL TESTS USED
F&R SW
Theory or model used in
32%
21%
Statistical tests used in 8%
10%

14. MOST COMMONLY MENTIONED CHANGE TACTICS (of 22 total tactics) (% of times mentioned)
F&R SW
Top management support & commitment
66%
59%
Sufficient resources provided
61%
46%
Clear & specific implementation plan
38%
Vision & outcomes clearly communicated
18%
Results institutionalized
55%
30%
Key individuals & groups involved
54%
36%
Widespread participation of staff
49%
40%
Activities revised as appropriate
20%
AVERAGE # OF TACTICS MENTIONED
6.6
5.1

15. LIMITATIONS
Data sets use different time periods and inclusion guidelines
Judgment in assessing articles for inclusion based on title and abstract
Sources sometimes used wording different from the wording of change tactics being studied
Some sources had more than one empirical basis; only strongest noted here
Liberal judgment on identification of tactics
Two raters separately reviewed articles and books (11% read by both; 2% disagreement)

16. CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS
Literature reviews & case studies were the most common sources of evidence
Few substantively addressed the variable of change tactics.
Go beyond gathering data from only a few managers or allegedly successful cases.
Use both qualitative methods such as observation and interviewing and quantitative methods such as surveys of participants and organizational outcomes data.
Examine relationships among different combinations of important variables.

17. SOME RESEARCH QUESTIONS
What preconditions (e.g., readiness, capacity, climate) affect the success of particular change tactics?
Do certain styles of leadership interact with particular tactics to enhance prospects for success?
What specific change tactics are more likely to contribute to successful change?
What change methods are successful, and under what conditions?
How is success impacted by contextual factors such as type of program, agency size or structure, environmental context, staff, or clients?
What direct connections can be made between change activities and organizational outcomes?

18. SOME RESOURCES
Fernandez, S. & Rainey, H Managing Successful Organizational Change in the Public Sector: An Agenda for Research and Practice. Public Administration Review 66(2): 1-25.
Packard, T. (2013). Organizational change: A conceptual framework to advance the evidence base. Journal of Human Behavior and the Social Environment. 23(1),
Palmer, I., Dunford, R., and Akin, G. (2009). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach, 2nd Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Proehl, R. (2001). Organizational Change in the Human Services. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 18